NASHVILLE – Fear of COVID-19 will not be a reason for Tennessee residents to vote by mail in the November general election, the state Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.
Absentee ballots filed for Thursday’s primary will remain valid, according to the court.
The High Court ruling overruled the term of office of a Nashville judge allowing any voter involved with COVID-19 to vote by mail. But the full trial remains unresolved.
Voters sued the Davidson County Chancellery Court this year to seek an extension of existing policy as cases of the new coronavirus began to sweep Tennessee.
On June 4, Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle made the decision that the state deserved to raise a COVID-19 exemption to the list of imaginable excuses. The state appealed and the Supreme Court agreed to take the case directly.
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In resolution 4-1, the High Court found that Lyle’s term of office was a mistake and set him aside.
“With respect to plaintiffs and individuals who are not particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 or who are not the guardians of people vulnerable to COVID19, we consider that the trial court erred in issuing the transitional mandate,” the Supreme Court said.
The ruling comes just one day before the state’s primary elections – the same day voters can first request absentee ballots for the November presidential election.
“I appreciate that the Tennessee Supreme Court passed our investigation of Tennessee’s electoral law. I am also grateful for the representation provided through the Attorney General’s office,” Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett said on Twitter.
So far, no other state has the postal voting factor in court, unlike the executive or legislature, court president Jeff Bivins said in an oral argument.
Tennessee is asking the electorate to provide an excuse for why they do not need to vote on the user: if they are going to be out of state all day early voting and elections, if they are over 60, if they are hospitalized, for example. . In the past, 14 imaginable excuses were presented to a voter who chooses not to vote on the user.
But the coronavirus pandemic is not explicitly one of the excuses, and as cases in Tennessee and across the country increased, some questioned whether considerations about the capture of the deadly virus were an excuse.
The Attorney General issued a notice in May stating that the concern about the virus was not a valid interpretation of the law, allowing poor health voters to vote by mail. The state also argued that it was financial and practically to particularly increase absentee ballot production before the August 6 primaries. Doing so, they said, would place an unnecessary burden on local electoral commissions, as the ballot processing procedure is largely decentralized to counties.
In arguments before the High Court last week, state comments suggest that Janet Kleinfelter contradict past interpretations of the state, marking a replacement in the state’s position.
“It’s a partial victory. When we started, the state’s position that no one can vote for absentees if they didn’t meet any of the pre-existing situations or tested positive for COVID-19 or was quarantined,” Memphis plaintiffs’ attorney Steve Mulroy said Wednesday.
“During oral arguments, they were forced to admit that those who have one of these underlying situations or live with those suffering from such a condition, or care about such a person, are free to vote in absentia.”
The new interpretation of the illness excuse would allow for people who have tested positive for COVID-19, or who believe they have been exposed to the virus. Also, the newer definition of illness allowed those with underlying medical conditions and their caretakers to apply for an absentee ballot.
He confirmed that interpretation in his resolution on Wednesday.
Tennessee does not regularly require documentation of an express illness to verify eligibility for an absence application, but calls a real voter.
Judge Sharon Lee disagreed with the majority’s view on the basis that even without an express illness, pandemic precautions save you giant meetings.
“In the midst of this pandemic and while Tennessee remains in a state of emergency, the qualified electorate in Tennessee without underlying medical or physical condition disorders will not be forced to decide to vote for the user and threaten to obtain COVID-19 or waste their constitutional protection. to vote. The Tennessee electorate deserves better,” he said.
In the run-up to the primaries, election officials suggested that local electoral commissions be prepared as if the 1.4 million registered electorates over the age of 60 voted by mail in the primaries. If they did, voter turnout in elections would exceed that of past elections, officials said.
The state argued that preparing for this number of electorates required hiring more election officials to process them and print more ballots and documents than usual, at the heart of the cargo argument.
But, the complainants said, there is no evidence that such a wave of absentee votes would overwhelm the state.
Although a record number of mail order bureaucracy has been earned and ballots have been returned statewide, those numbers come from the estimated 1.4 million shipments, said one of the lawyers representing voting rights groups.
Most states allow the excuse of mail or mail voting, Ballotpedia reports, many of which have recently abandoned this requirement due to COVID-19 considerations.
Tennessee, however, is one of the few remaining states that continue to ask for an excuse to vote in absentia. Many states also allow the user to be mailed on appropriate receptacles with local election boards, avoiding imaginable delays in the later workplace that have worried Tennessee voters this year.
Contribution: Joel Ebert contributed.
Follow Mariah Timms on Twitter @MariahTimms.